Elysia chlorotica
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
| Elysia chlorotica | ||||||||||||||||||||
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Scientific classification | ||||||||||||||||||||
|
||||||||||||||||||||
| Binomial name | ||||||||||||||||||||
| Elysia chlorotica Gould, 1870 |
Elysia chlorotica is a small to medium-sized species of green sea slug, a marine opisthobranch gastropod mollusk.
This sea slug resembles a nudibranch, but it is not closely related to that order of gastropods, instead it is a sacoglossan.
Contents |
[edit] Description
This species is usually a strong green in color. The parapodial edges are frilly like lettuce, but not as frilly as they are in Elysia crispata.
[edit] Life Habits
This littoral sea slug lives in a subcellular endosymbiotic relationship with chloroplasts of the marine heterokont alga Vaucheria litorea. These borrowed chloroplasts provide their host with the products of photosynthesis. Although the chloroplasts survive for the whole lifespan of the mollusc (about 10 months), they are not transferred to their young.[1]
[edit] References
- ^ Brian J. Green, Wei-Ye Li, James R. Manhart, Theodore C. Fox, Elizabeth J. Summer, Robert A. Kennedy, Sidney K. Pierce, and Mary E. Rumpho (September 2000). "Mollusc-Algal Chloroplast Endosymbiosis. Photosynthesis, Thylakoid Protein Maintenance, and Chloroplast Gene Expression Continue for Many Months in the Absence of the Algal Nucleus". Plant Physiology 124: 331–342. doi:.
